Yasushi Nakamura (Yokohama National University): Man shall not live by ‘imports’ alone: Endogenous economic growth in Russia

​Thursday 25th August at 13:30–14:30

Yasushi Nakamura (Yokohama National University) will present his paper entitled

Man shall not live by ‘imports’ alone: Endogenous economic growth in Russia

Abstract
Both oil export and state-promoted high-tech industries hardly work an instant miracle to the Russian economy. Endogenous growth being based on domestic demands and local industries seems to be the key to Russian prosperity. This study analyzes Russian housing construction to assess the plausibility of the endogenous growth, focusing on competition between housing construction and import, and on difference in influences of nation-wide and region-specific factors on housing construction. To achieve it, a model considering spatial correlation was applied to data of the 78 Russian regions from 1997 to 2014. The result suggested that gross regional products positively related to housing construction more intensively than the nation-wide GDP and oil export. The result also indicated housing construction and imports did not compete. Additionally, the national housing program started in 2006 did not significantly change housing construction; it, however, might contribute to underpinning housing construction. Generally, we do not need to be too pessimistic about the Russian endogenous economic growth. The model, however, could not capture large variations in housing construction by region and by year; it seems necessary to accommodate temporal changes in spatial correlation and differences in variances of the regional error terms.